Turn It Up! sold to longtime employee amid turntable turnaround for physical media
NORTHAMPTON — Most customers buying records, compact discs, DVDs and — even — tapes at Turn It Up! weren't born yet when the shop opened 30 years ago, said owner, founder and soon-to-be-former owner Patrick Pezzati.
"There is also a tactile experience to it that young people seem to relish," Pezzati said. "Streaming is convenient. You lose something with convenience."
Turn It Up! is being sold from Chandra Hancock and Patrick Pezzati to longtime employee Carson Arnold on Nov. 24, the 30th anniversary of its original opening. Here all three pose at the Brattleboro, Vermont, store. (Provided photo)The Republican
Later this month, it'll be a new owner — 21-year-employee Carson Arnold — leading Turn It Up! through a continuing national comeback for media you can hold, see and drop the needle on after decades of digital. He bought the stores in Northampton; Brattleboro, Vermont; and the weekend-only location at The Montague Bookmill this month from husband-and-wife Pezzati and Chandra Hancock.
Giana Esteras, 19, came to Turn It Up! in Northampton to look for 1990s punk music. She streams music online and said that it's a great way to preview music before coming to a store and buying it. Esteras said that owning a physical copy is important because it's not only the music she owns but the art on the cover and extra information in the sleeve. (Douglas Hook / The Republican)Douglas Hook
Pezzati and Hancock opened Turn It Up! in Northampton on Nov. 24, 1995.
It was mostly them selling their own CD collection, but the business grew from there.
Arnold takes over Nov. 24 of this year, 30 years to the day.
"Now 40 and with a family of his own, Carson is taking the next logical step and putting his decades of expertise to use," Pezzati said.
The year 1995 was before the digital download revolution in media, before the COVID shutdown and before the ongoing resurgence of physical media.
Turn It Up! clerk Eric Cunha helps a customer at the Northampton location on Pleasant Street on Wednesday. (Douglas Hook / The Republican)Douglas Hook
"It's been a great turnaround, to see people getting into physical media again," Arnold said Wednesday. "They are discovering it for the first time."
Pezzati said: "That's interesting for us, and it's great for Carson."
He added that now is the time to travel more with Hancock.
Nationally, vinyl sales held steady in the first half of 2025, said industry mouthpiece the Recording Industry Association of America . Sales of records make up more than three-quarters of all physical music revenue following a nearly two-decade resurgence.
Numbers aren't in, but the RIAA hopes Taylor Swift's "Life of a Showgirl" will make for a strong second half of 2025.
For all of 2024, revenue from vinyl records grew 7% to $1.4 billion. That's the 18th consecutive year of growth. For the third year in a row, vinyl albums outsold CDs: 44 million albums vs. 33 million CDs.
Within two years of Turn it Up! opening in Northampton, a second location opened in Keene, New Hampshire, and in the next decade other locations opened in Hanover, New Hampshire, and Brattleboro, Vermont, and Easthampton and Montague here in Massachusetts.
Over the years, the locations in Keene, Hanover and Easthampton all closed, leaving only the locations in Northampton, Brattleboro and Montague, where Arnold said he'd like to expand hours.
Arnold said he grew up in Vermont in his parents' used bookshop.
Giana Esteras, 19, came to Turn It Up! in Northampton to look for 1990s punk music. (Douglas Hook / The Republican)Douglas Hook
When he was about 10, he started coming in to Turn it Up! Then worked there as a teen, eventually managing the Keene location.
He said most music lovers are hybrids, listening online then geeking out on records and CDs if they find something they love.
Online music service Spotify, with its curated playlists, is driving fandom. Young fans can curate and share playlists quickly, not labor hours over a mixtape for their friends.
"It's given people a lot of music knowledge. People are learning at a hyper rate now," Arnold said.
Plus, a record collection looks cool in your living room.
It's not just for the young, of course.
"Also, we still have a lot of our 30-year regulars and people who have come in every single day," he said.
Turn it Up! has a solid business in used records, Arnold said.
"We have a lot of enthusiasts who come in, buy a bunch of used stuff and then sell it back to us," he said.
And he says they pay competitive prices.
Have some Slayer albums gathering dust? Turn It Up! has a used-album want list heavy on heavy metal from the 1980s and '90s. Those bands have followings, but not the groundswell of support or critical acclaim to merit a re-issue.
"So those are albums we're always looking for," he said.
Customers' want lists are varied but heavy in the '90s and early 2000s, such as English electronic band Portishead and rapper Kendrick Lamar. Then there are the old standbys: The Beatles, Pink Floyd.
There are aficionados of the free jazz movement, such as Alice Coltrane .
"People deep-dig themselves," Arnold said.
This turnaround for turntables is helped in Northampton, Pezzati said, by a recent resurgence in live music. The reopened Iron Horse Music Hall , and concerts and promoter DSP Shows' concerts at the Academy of Music all enliven a downtown that had gotten a little quiet.
"It helps to have live music," he said. "It draws people to Northampton who are our customers."
Stories by Jim Kinney
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